On July 11, Kakao Entertainment published their third white paper regarding their response to illegal distribution of webtoons and web novels. In it, the company reported that they have successfully removed 14.2 million pirated items on the Internet from November 2022 to May 2023.

Additionally, the average number of deletions has increased to about 2.36 million. If this trend continues, more than 28 million illegal pieces are expected to be blocked this year.

Kakao has shown strong determination to combat copyright infringement of their content. In 2021, they became the first in the industry to organize a team dedicated to taking down illegal materials. The group named P.CoK (Protecting the Contents of Kakao Entertainment) monitors search engines, social media, and video platforms to block webtoons and web novels that have been illegally shared in different languages.

The company has also expanded their crackdown to include secondary works related to their web content. Products that use intellectual property like character goods or T-shirts without copyright, for instance, are prohibited. Another example that Kakao mentioned was unlicensed web novel publications sold on an e-commerce website such as Amazon.

On top of that, P.CoK has conducted monitoring not only on illegal sites but also official webtoon and web novel platforms in order to thoroughly protect their content.

Lee Ho-jun, head of Kakao’s legal department, stated that the company will publish more white papers and share their knowledge on countering illegal distribution as well as continue to upgrade their crackdown system.

(Sources: Kakao Entertainment. Yonhap News. Images via Kakao Entertainment.)